---

Whereas media is a powerful tool for development, often the communities which the media and development initiatives target have limited opportunity to effectively participate in influencing and setting the agenda for their own development through media. The interrelation between media and community development therefore is not being adequately utilized. This situation has and continues to undermine the effectiveness of the citizens and the media itself in promoting development in a responsive way. In general, community media is not well developed as a community response to salient issues of development such as governance, poverty, youth empowerment, etc., thereby leaving the populace at the mercy of traditional media developers. As such, community members have been reduced to talking about some issues without meaningful and proactive engagement that would foster effective media responsiveness to their pressing development challenges such as demand for improvements in service deli

---